


Habits (and Other Tender Things)

by Elialys



Series: Trickling Down the Hourglass [8]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Domestic, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Ficlet Collection, Idiots in Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-23
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-25 10:28:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21536260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elialys/pseuds/Elialys
Summary: Sharing the same flat and physically being around one another for hours on end is not a problem in itself, although they do get on each other’s nerves over the smallest of things, the way any cohabiting breathing beings do.The bickering is nothing new, the main difference being that the Doctor cannot simply get the apartment to hide the bathroom’s door from her as he often did on the TARDIS.(Snippets from the life of two soft idiots in love)
Relationships: Metacrisis Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler
Series: Trickling Down the Hourglass [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1385539
Comments: 60
Kudos: 138





	1. Bets

**Author's Note:**

> I just wanted to cheer myself up; I missed writing about my soft idiots in this particular verse, where everything is mostly fluff and sex.
> 
> I'm publishing it as a new story, as I actually have quite a few of those 'random life snippets' scenes brewing in my brain, things that I don't think are substantial enough to turn into a proper big oneshot or a multi-chapter story, but that I love daydreaming about anyway, so do expect more.

“ _This co-dependency thing isn’t healthy, you know_ ,” Jackie tells her daughter, not long after she and the Doctor make it back from Norway. “ _The two of you together, every waking hour of the day and night…You’re gonna drive each other barmy.”_

What Jackie seems to forget is that this isn’t the first time the Doctor and Rose find themselves spending all of their time together. Counting both his previous incarnations, they’d spent about twenty-six months together, living in close-quarters.

Sure, these ‘close-quarters’ had been an alien ship with an infinite number of stretching rooms and corridors, and yet somehow, despite this infinity of space they could have put between them, they ended up breathing the same air for two years, save for when they slept in their respective bedrooms, while all of their time outside of the TARDIS was spent arm-in-arm or hand-in-hand, running in the same direction, sometimes towards something or, more often than not, _away_ from something. 

Sharing the same flat and physically being around one another for hours on end is therefore not a problem in itself, although they do get on each other’s nerves over the smallest of things, the way any cohabiting breathing beings do.

The bickering is nothing new, the main difference being that the Doctor cannot simply get the apartment to hide the bathroom’s door from her as he often did on the TARDIS – he once tries using his sonic to _remove_ said bathroom door to make some kind of point, which only leads to Rose trudging passed him, subsequently urinating defiantly while staring right at him, and that’s another relationship milestone they can tick off that day.

The betting… _that_ starts innocently enough, when they realise that none of them is keen on wasting time on things like _chores_. Since he doesn’t initially have any money to wager, activities such as ‘doing the dishes’ or ‘vacuuming the entire flat’ turn out to be the perfect bargaining chips.

And, the two of them being rather childish, generally speaking, the things they bet on are rarely well thought-out.

‘I bet I can reach the top of the stairs first’, ‘I bet I can make my shopping trolley go faster than yours’, ‘I bet you can’t make it twenty minutes before Mum gets the urge to slap you’.

Rose is fiercely competitive, which leads to many of her victories, although he wins his fair share of bets.

Because she’s also quite in love, she often ends up doing the dishes with him anyway, or working alongside him while he tidies up their living room or folds their laundry.

She says she does it out of pity, obviously, but the truth is, pushing the boring aspect of any chore aside, she relishes in these moments shared with him, in the sheer _banality_ of these tasks.

She loves that he’s the one who gets them into the habit of listening to music while they clean, loves the fact that their taste in music turns out to be fairly similar. She loves that he’s got so many _concert_ _anecdotes_ to share with her, loves hearing him say that once their TARDIS is grown, he’ll finally take her to see Elvis, along with Queen or the Beatles.

She loves the way he sometimes drops whatever rag or spray or pair of socks he’s holding to sneak his arms around her and gather her snuggly to him, holding him to her just as tightly as they sway to whatever tune is playing at the time.

She loves to distract him, too, once betting that he can’t make it through the folding of that load of laundry scattered all over their bed without having to take off her knickers – an odd suggestion for sure, but he’s up for it.

She gets him off task easily enough, most of their clean clothes ending up on the floor from their bit of wrestling, but to give him credit, her knickers never actually come off that day, eventually resuming his task while she lies panting on a heap of crumpled shirts, regularly nudging her to extract one of them from beneath her shivering body.

He stares at her with the most unperturbed of expression as he folds the last of their clothes, his hair deliciously tousled, a new love bite darkening near the base of his throat.

And because he’s also quite in love, that night, he helps her with the dishes.


	2. Heat Transfer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose does love his warm body, constantly encouraging heat transfer between them; and it’s not like she’s simply borrowing his warmth. She’s stealing it, plain and simple.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a little bit of soft love between two idiots.
> 
> (For those of you wondering about 'A scatter of echoes', the next chapter will come, I promise. Thank you for being patient with me while I fight bugs and sad winter feels)

The Doctor doesn’t dislike the cold in this new body.

He _loathes_ it.

It doesn’t come to him all at once, either. It grows steadily, as the months go by, and late spring turns into summer, then autumn. As this particular season progresses, so does his displeasure.

By December, he’s come to the conclusion that having an internal temperature this high is absolutely ridiculous and pointless, especially when the outside world is now stuck in _freezing_ temperatures that refuse to go back up. Whenever he steps out of a building, any inch of him that is exposed to the frost immediately starts leaking heat, and he’s powerless against the laws of thermodynamics.

“You are such a dork,” Rose points out the first time he goes outside with his new ‘winter outfit’, which comprises (among other things) three layers of clothes, a thick coat, gloves, a scarf and a woollen hat. “You do realise those are _ski_ goggles you’re wearing, right?”

“My eyeballs were freezing,” he replies into his scarf, still rather unhappy about the stinging sensation in his nose and cheekbones, which remain vulnerable to the cold.

For all of her eye rolling at his supposedly ‘dramatic’ reactions, his wife is not faring any better than him whenever they step out in these arctic conditions.

While she will shamelessly mock him for being so sensitive to the drop in temperature, _her_ solution is to use him as a heat pad, going as far as regularly slipping her freezing little hands all the way beneath layers of coat, jumper, shirt and undershirt to press her icy palms over his back.

“You’re so warm,” she tells him, having somehow burrowed her face so efficiently into the crook of his neck that her nose has managed to bypass the tick scarf to be pressed into his skin.

Well, he _knows_ he is, that’s kind of the problem isn’t it?

Not only is he a good fifteen degrees hotter than his warmest incarnation was, but he’s also a whole degree hotter than _her_ body. Maybe it’s all to do with male versus female physiology, or maybe it’s just the universe being an arse.

He suspects the latter.

Rose does love his warm body, constantly encouraging heat transfer between them; and it’s not like she’s simply _borrowing_ his warmth. She’s stealing it, plain and simple.

Sneaking her icy toes between his legs, splaying her frozen hands upon his shoulder blades, ignoring his hisses of discomfort at the sensation, or how his entire body always breaks into shudders, his skin covered in goose-flesh.

“C’mon, t’s not _that_ bad,” she tells him once, while way too many of her digits poke into his shivering flesh like tiny icicles.

“I beg to differ,” he replies. “I’ll have you know that you’ve turned into a proper thermal thief, lately.”

“Yeah?” she asks against his neck, a laughter in her voice. “Gonna call the cops on me?”

“Make fun all you want, you know it’s true. You take and you take, until all that’s left of me are a bunch of frozen cells. You’re like… _baloukas_.”

“What’s that?” she asks, wiggling her warming toes against his calf.

“Mite-like creatures,” he explains. “They burrow themselves in the subcutaneous tissues of any warm-blooded host, and slowly suck at their heat energy while they lay their eggs deep below the dermis.”

There is pause. “Are you…comparing me to a parasite that lays its eggs under people’s skin?”

“There are some blatant similarities.”

“Mm,” she muses. “Some people would take offence to that, you know. They might even go as far as cutting you off completely. For like, at least a week.”

“Cutting me off?” he repeats, unfamiliar with that concept.

“No sex,” she explains. “At all.”

He ponders on her remark. “Nah,” he eventually says.

“Nah?”

“Not gonna happen.”

“Oh, it absolutely could.”

“I respectfully disagree.”

Rose actually pushes herself off him, half-raising off the mattress to look at him. “You really are full of yourself.”

He shrugs a little. “Just pragmatic,” he admits. “Considering how on average, you instigate sex seventy-three percent of the time, you suddenly stopping altogether seems unlikely.”

She stares at him. “I do not.”

“Oh yes, you do,” he says. “It’s been part of our dynamic for a while, too, with some fluctuation, obviously. Now I know that number sounds _bad_ , but only if we assume it means you’re more into sex than I am, which, we both know is not the case. The only reason why I don’t instigate it more often is because…well, you do. A lot. And I’m not exactly opposed to it. Ever.”

When she remains quiet, he adds: “In any case, my point being, I don’t think ‘cutting me off’ would be a suitable punishment for me. You’d punish yourself just as much, and really, it wouldn’t be fair on you.”

Rose thinks about it for a long moment, .

“You’re right,” she eventually says. “Wouldn’t be fair on me.”

She’s falling back upon the mattress, then, soon rolling sideways onto the bed, holding on tightly onto the covers, until she ends up completely wrapped up in linens…his entire body now exposed to the chilly night air.

“How’s that for punishment?” she asks, her voice half-muffled into the covers.

He feels the heat already escaping his bare skin in waves, until he’s nothing short of shaking from head to toe, rather violently, too.

“I may die,” he states, barely exaggerating, his teeth chattering.

“Better start unwrapping me, then,” she says, and he can just _see_ it, the way her tongue must be poking between her teeth.

The Doctor gets to work.

By the time he’s managed to unravel the linen from her body, her flesh has become infused with warmth, while his skin is as cold as his Time Lord bodies used to be. She’s all too happy to wrap herself around him, until he’s sighing deeply into the crook of her neck, revelling in the feel of her, warming up every single one of his cells.

“Who’s the thermal thief, now?” she whispers in his ear.

The fondness in her voice warms up his heart and his very soul.


	3. Phantoms

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I literally just jolted this down. Between 7pm and 9pm, after working all day. Not even attempting editing for now, so whoops.
> 
> This is for my soul sister, who I know can use some tenderness, today. I love you, darling ♥

It still happens; not as often as it used to, maybe not as much as it should.

But it still happens.

He knows there is absolutely no point in him trying to hide it from her, yet he tries. Every single time.

He wishes he could explain it, especially to her. Why it happens. What triggers it. Unfortunately, there is often no reason for it at all. One day, everything is absolutely fine, more than fine – how could it _not_ be fine, when he gets to wake up with Rose’s body pressed to his? When he gets to see her smile, to hear her laugh, to feel the tight hold of her arms around him as she holds his body and hums against his skin?

But then a ‘next day’ comes, a week, three weeks, four months later, and everything is...grey.

Everything is dim, and slow, and heavy.

So bloody _heavy_.

He doesn’t know why, and it only makes it worse. Because surely, finding the cause for his sudden inability to smile due to how strenuous that simple facial movement feels would make things a little bit easier to deal with. That’s how he’s always done things, after all: find the source of the problem, and fix it.

And if he can’t fix it, find a way around it.

Unfortunately, there is no finding a way around the phantoms in his head, or from the way they wrap their icy fingers around his heart; they’re here to stay.

Nine hundred years of memories. Many of them not of the ‘happy’ variety. They’re bound to create some chaos inside his psyche every once in a while. It is absolutely normal and an understandable side effect from his various traumas.

It doesn’t make this any more bearable.

He used to be so good at distracting himself. Feeling a bit down and morose? Let’s go to the Sixth Moon of Myronia and its anti-gravity waterfall – it will literally turn your whole world upside down!

There’s no more escaping his own head with a snap of a lever. His thoughts are trapped in his head the way his body is trapped on Earth.

And so the Doctor runs.

He runs _mundanely_ , the way he’s seen so many humans run. With their running outfits and their running playlist and their running water bottle because hydration is important. He’s almost repulsed by how ‘common’ this new habit of his is. Yet now that he’s started, he seems quite unable to stop.

Dawn is barely breaking today when he leaves the warmth of the bed.

He’s been awake most of the night, as he tried and failed to go back to sleep after yet another unpleasant dream. Even the comforting feel of Rose’s body hadn’t been enough to chase the heaviness away, already aware that this was not going to be a good day. He could have woken her up, and found solace in her touch, in the soft whispers of her love; it sure wouldn’t be the first time.

He can’t quite bring himself to do it. To stir her from sleep, only to burden her with his aggravating...melancholy.

Again.

He gets up instead, getting dressed in silence, the sun still nowhere to be seen by the time he sets off on his usual route. He’s not been running five minutes that he realises the sun might not actually show up at all today – which is not helping his mood; while it is definitely rising, the colours in his surrounding landscape remain dull, and lifeless.

Soon, he’s able to see that the sky is heavy with clouds, a storm brewing in the air – a rather fitting metaphor for his state of mind. He almost feels it, how the energy shifts around him, as rain clouds gather and swell, the way he always used to feel it.

But ultimately, he doesn’t feel it at all, not anymore, only pretending that he can. Lying to himself the way he lies to so many, about so many things.

He runs for a long while, well over an hour, waiting for the sky to open up and drench him to the bones, just to make a point – if he can’t have the sun, today, he might as well get soaked and properly miserable. But by the time he makes it back home, it hasn’t started raining at all, which only makes him feel worse.

His plans to go brood in the shower and stay under the hot spray of water for an undetermined amount of time are quickly derailed. The moment he enters the flat, as quietly as he can so he doesn’t wake her up, he realises it is pointless: there is a smell coming from the kitchen.

A very _enticing_ smell.

Their timing is, as it often is, quite perfect, walking in the kitchen just as Rose extracts a fresh load of banana bread from the oven.

“See I knew it’d be pointless to even try texting you,” she says, keeping her back turned as she sets her cake on the counter. “All I’ve got to do is open up a couple of bananas and you come home running.”

He approaches her, drawn to her as much as he is drawn to the food.

Well, maybe a little bit more to her than to the food.

“You didn’t just open them up, from the looks of it,” he answers a bit too casually, _almost_ leaning against her back; he doesn’t, because he’s sweaty and a tad revolting. “More like, mashed them into submission and subjected them to extreme heat.”

“They were being uncooperative,” she replies lightly, ignoring his attempt at keeping his sticky body off hers, leaning back against his chest so heavily that he has no other choice but to counter her weight by leaning forward, soon wrapping her tightly in his arms for good measures. “I had to show them who’s boss.”

“Mmm…” he approves, his face already buried in her hair; the smell of her is more enticing than any banana-flavoured food, her warm body better than any hot shower.

He’s still sweaty and grumpy, though, so that even as he slowly rocks them on the spot and keeps his entire face squished to her neck, he _knows_ this is not fair on her.

Rose is no fool; she’s seen him go through enough of ‘these days’ to recognise the signs.

Instead of trying to free herself from his embrace, she merely shifts in his arms, until she’s facing him. He doesn’t particularly like being forced away from her neck, but before long, he’s lost in her eyes, while both her hands cup his scruffy face, and that’s not too bad at all.

Despite the light-hearted nature of their exchange so far, there is no smile on her lips as she looks up at him, one of her hands already moving from his cheek to his hair in a slow, soothing caress.

There really is no point in lying to her, no point in even trying, just like she doesn’t bother with asking him if he’s okay.

He’s tried it all, the pushing her away and isolating himself and being irritable or even plain unlikable.

She never lets him go.

She gives him space when he needs it, but she’s always within arm’s reach, because ultimately, what he needs is _her_.

She's pushing herself on her tiptoes, now, leaning fully against his chest as she presses a kiss to that beloved spot of hers between his ear and jaw, her warm breath tickling his nerves while her fingers curl in his hair, and really, who needs the sun when one has Rose Tyler?

“So…what’s first?” she whispers in his ear, lightly nibbling on his earlobe. “Shower or cake?”

It turns out to be _neither_ , and that’s quite alright, too.


End file.
